Page 26 of Sapphire Storm

Bookend your calls with a check-in text or a voicemail to afriend in the know. Leave them the address of your destination too, just incase.

Make friends at the hotels you visit more than once. Maybeeven offer them the occasional favor, if you can bear it. Then they’re in onthe game before they realize it.

Never, under any circumstances, threaten someone withblackmail if they refuse to pay. You don’t know who they are or how easily theycan kill. A thoughtless threat against the wrong client is a great way to endup in pieces in the East River.

But Zach had taught him about things other than dangers—howto relax a client, get them to lower their guard, shed the layers of arroganceand boasting clients used to gird their egos as they paid for sex. Layers thatmade them both annoying to deal with but also hesitant to tell you what reallygot them off. Because that information—the fantasy or kink they were afraid toask for from anyone else—was how you turned them into a repeat client whowalked away grateful and loyal. “It’s their million-dollar answer,” Zach hadtold him “Once you’ve got it, you can spin them into gold.”

After those first few weeks of training, Zach took him outon his first call. The whole thing had felt both delicious and forbidden becausethe businessman they’d met at the Mandarin Oriental on Columbus Circle was oneof those sweet, older guys who got gooey and grateful in the presence of young,beautiful men. And he was as delightfully turned on by watching the two of themtogether as he was by the things they’d done to him to finish him off. “One ofthe easy ones,” Zach had whispered in the elevator afterward. “Good place foryou to start,” he’d added with a wink.

And yeah, there’d been bad nights and creepy calls, mostlyguys who tried to force drugs on him he refused to take. “Great way to end upin a shipping container bound for Eastern Europe,” Zach always said of theworking boys who thought clients existed to feed their vices. But nothing helda candle to the handsome ones, the ones who thought they were entitled to a discountbecause of their fit bodies and good looks. They were the ones quickest toanger and entitlement, the ones who’d tried to get physical with him as theyrefused to pay what had been agreed to. For many of those years, Ethan believedthe most dangerous thing in an escort’s life was a client who wasn’t clear onwhat they’d bought. Then, one night, like a cab jumping the curb, came littleRonnie Burton and his mom.

He was overwhelmed by how quickly these memories had comeback. How powerful they were. They’d roared out of a part of himself he’d keptunder lock and key for years, but Roman Walker had managed to kick the dooropen in one crazed night.

“Ethan?”

His silence had the guy across from him looking concerned.

“I was good at it,” Ethan answered. “It’s that simple. Or itwas.”

“’Cause you could get it up for all those people.”

“No. Because I knew what the job was. And it wasn’t to getit up. Not always.”

“What was it then?”

“It was about their pleasure, not mine. With some of them,whether or not I got it up was irrelevant.”

“You didn’t ever freak out like I did?” Roman asked.

“In the beginning it was scary, but then I realized it wasjust sex. I mean, I had friends who were taking the train in the middle of thenight into neighborhoods they’d never set foot in to get a blow job from a strangerwho might have turned out to be Jeffrey Dahmer. What I was doing wasn’t anymore dangerous than that. In fact, I got more advance information out of myclients than my friends ever bothered to get from their one offs. I learned howto always know exactly what I was walking into.”

“I don’t know, though. I mean, the money might make themthink they have a right to do more to you than they should.”

“That’s why you never go out on a call without a clear understandingin advance of what services will be rendered and how much you’re charging.”

“Wow. So you were a real professional then.”

“Also, a switchblade helps. I only had to pull it once ortwice in the beginning.”

“Uh huh.”

“And I took some Thai boxing classes, but I never really hadto use those.”

“Uhhuh.”

Ethan chewed and swallowed. “What’s the tone about, Roman?”

“I’m just saying. It’s not that safe.”

“Nothing’s safe. I was an adult who made an adult choice.But you made the right choice not going into that house that night. Nobodyshould be doing it who doesn’t want to be. After a while, I figured out sometricks for making the difficult ones easier to deal with.”

“Like what?” Roman asked.

“Trade secrets.” Ethan winked and sipped his sparklingwater.

A silence fell.

Roman broke it. “I can’t have sex with someone I don’t like.You know, like,likelike.”

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